Impact of Price Cap Regulation on Phone Call Costs for U.S. Inmates

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Abstract/Contents

Abstract: It is well documented that incarcerated individuals in the U.S. prisons and jails pay an exorbitant fee for phone calling services. Regulatory agencies have suggested the monopoly power and contract structure of phone providers in jails and prisons as the reason for these high per-minute phone calling rates. In this thesis, I will analyze the effect of price cap regulation (PCR) imposed by the Federal Communications Commission on per-minute phone calling rates for incarcerated individuals on phone calls that are made between two states. To identify the impact of this rulemaking, I conduct a difference-in-difference approach to self-reported data submitted to the FCC from 2016-2021. I use this provider reporting data to examine if the rulemaking resulted in a decrease in the total cost of a phone call. I demonstrate that regulation did not significantly decrease the total cost of a standard interstate phone call. Rather, cost shifted up to a slight degree or stayed roughly the same. I hypothesize that this effect could be due to ancillary fees increasing along with the mandated per-minute rate decrease.

Author	Martinez, Xavier
Advisor	Rosston, Gregory

Subject	Inmate Calling Service
Subject	Federal Communications Commission
Subject	Prisons
Subject	price cap regulation
Genre	Text
Genre	Thesis

DOI	https://doi.org/10.25740/zb203rb2555
Location	https://purl.stanford.edu/zb203rb2555

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License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC).

Preferred citation: Martinez, X. (2023). Impact of Price Cap Regulation on Phone Call Costs for U.S. Inmates. Stanford Digital Repository. Available at https://purl.stanford.edu/zb203rb2555. https://doi.org/10.25740/zb203rb2555.

Stanford University, Department of Economics, Honors Theses

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